Treatment systems and methods for wastewater containing waste sludge are well known in the art. The purpose of such systems and methods is for water reclamation and pollution control by converting volatile suspended solids to bacterial cells and stabilizing and removing the resulting biosolids. In many systems and methods, wastewater is treated in an anaerobic process. Other treatment processes for solids present in waste sludge include incineration, aerobic digestion, lime stabilization, solar drying beds, etc. The result of such treatment is the volume reduction of volatile suspended solids which is disposed of in landfill or used to produce other products such as compost.
It is desired to improve the efficiency of such types of systems and methods both from the point of view of producing a final liquid effluent that can be more safely returned to the environment and also to be able to remove more of the concentrated volatile suspended solids from the waste sludge.